Sega Mega Drive/Genesis: Collected Works, by Stuart Keith and edited by Darren Wall, is a sturdy, square, large, and very black book. It is also a love letter to the legacy of a video game console and the people who helped make that legacy. The book opens with a bit of history, with many quotes from individuals who were personally involved, relating Sega’s development, release, challenges, and successes with the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis home console. This is a well-written and entertaining recounting of the console that, for a time, stole the US gaming market right out of Nintendo’s hands.

The bulk of the book, however, is dedicated to a decadent, glossy, beautiful collection of images of the console and some of its star games. Hardware sketches and photos include release and prototype console and accessory designs, including an impressive fold-out technical drawing of the physical enclosure of the model 1 Mega Drive. A broad selection of featured games are also represented, with concept art, sketches, title screen and background images, and sprite animation frame spreads. Every image is numbered, and many of them are referred to by number in the text portions of the book.

The tome concludes with a series of 2-4 page interviews with various game designers, musicians, and programmers from Japan and the US. These interviews are in dark blue ink on slightly cheaper matte paper, but feature additional sketches to help add context and personality to the interviewees and the games they talk about.

If you are a fan of the Sega Genesis, you probably should find a way to own this book. It is a high quality work that really honors the creativity and art of a defining period in Sega’s history. It is rare to encounter a book so clearly crafted with love and respect, and given how visual video games are, it doesn't seem at all inappropriate that a game console should be presented this way.

It's a good book, but I wish they haven't wasted so much space on sprite sheets and such. That's just filler stuff.Also, a lot of the artwork in it have been released in hi res before, like the Monster World and Phantasy Star artwork. Those were all reused.

I guess I'm just disappointed in that they could've used all that space for more prototype shots or technical drawings, or internal hardware, things which are not immediately apparent to anyone.

I'm still hoping for a Saturn one. That thing has a lot of unknowns in its past, as well as the most interesting cancelled titles and rumoured hardware expansions.